3.9. covid19_region_updates

This CLI is designed to create 19 summary files for a specific region defined by an input region file, such as brhd.json. It can use machines that have MPI through the mpi4py Python module to parallelize the process of creating summary movies and figures for that region. It is similar underneath the hood to the API calls that, e.g., covid19_movie_updates uses.

Its help output, when running covid19_region_updates -h, is the following,

usage: covid19_region_updates [-h] -r region [-d DIRNAME] [-i]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r region, --region region
                        region as JSON file.
  -d DIRNAME, --dirname DIRNAME
                        The name of the directory to which to put all this stuff. Default is XXXX.
  -i, --info            If chosen, then turn on INFO logging.

Here are the command line flags.

  • -r or --region is the geographical region JSON file, such as brhd.json as described in covid19_create_region.

  • -d or --dirname is the directory into which to dump the output files. By default, if unspecified, dumps into the current working directory.

  • -i or --info turns on INFO level logging. This is useful to see what sort of output this CLI produces.

If you have access to a powerful supercomputer, I invite you try this out!

srun -N4 covid19_region_updates -r brhd.json -i

This will use 4 nodes on a supercomputing machine to generate the latest summary data on the Blue Ridge Health District.